Producing the Sublime
by Karyl McLeod
Summary: If you really think about it,” Hotch said, “This thing between us is the only thing that does make sense."


_Producing the Sublime._

_Thus are two ideas as opposite as can be imagined reconciled in the extremes of both; and both, in spite of their opposite nature, brought to concur in producing the sublime._

Sir Edmund Burke, On the Sublime and Beautiful.

"Congratulations, The Vampire Cruzer case has been closed," J.J. said over the FedCam. "The first time we've ever closed a case based partly on the profile of a computer and you did it, Garcia."

"Oh, god," Garcia said distantly, glumly. "That makes me a computer profiler, doesn't it? I have to hate _myself _now. The Vampire Cruzer, which is by the way a way-obvious pseudo reference to the Lost Boys, wrote a spectral program that overshadowed the Palo Alto bank software. We traced the accounts, restored funds, and voila, we closed the case. It was easy. I'm amazed it took seven weeks."

"How come you don't seem so happy about it being over?" J.J. asked, her face scrunching up as if to see through the screen more clearly.

Garcia propped up a smile. "I'm happy the little worm was nabbed. I'm happy everyone got their money back … "

"And after seven weeks in the field with Hotch you're not absolutely dying to come home?" J.J. said, her eyebrows lifting together in subtle amazement.

Garcia shrugged a little. "It's just … it wasn't all work. It was mostly work but it was fun work, too, you know?"

"And?"

Garcia removed her glasses, to stare directly into the camera lens. "J.J., can I ask you something that'll stay just between us?"

"Of course."

Penelope nodded, deciding to go forward slowly. "If you were around a guy you'd known for a long, long time and suddenly he was making you feel … all these butterflies in your tummy -- and kind of hot and cold at the same time … so nervous you can't calm down really. What would you call that?"

"Either the real thing or the stomach flu. Why?"

Garcia shut her eyes at the answer. "Oh, my god, I was afraid of that."

A tapping at the glass door behind her dragged away her attention -- he was staring through the French doors unfolding onto the patio accessible from cliff steps up from the Boardwalk sandbar.

She could only smile. It was Aaron Hotchner and he also was smiling, genuinely smiling, with teeth even.

"Just a second, Aaron's here," Garcia said abruptly to JJ before she jumped up to quickly open the doors. "Hey, Skee Ball Wizard, you'd better be ready to buy me a major dinner after beating me at my own game."

He brandished a basket he'd been keeping at his side. "Compliments of Spiaggia dei Diamanti. How does that sound, Ms Garcia?"  
"Like ten kinds of expensive, SSA Hot Stuff."

He nodded. "I decided that our quick wrap-up of the case merited the expense. Sorry I interrupted your chat with J.J.. Tell her I said hello and finish up your conversation. I'll get us set-up out here on the veranda."

She saluted him with a teasing smile. "Have at it, Skee ball."

When Garcia turned back toward the computer, she thought J.J.'s jaw had come unhinged.

"_Aaron_?" J.J. asked, gawking, stunned and obviously fighting for words. "SSA _Hot stuff_? _**Skee ball**_?"

"Yeah? So what?" Garcia said, prickly at J.J.'s reaction.

"So … nothing, it's just -- " J.J. shook her head hard. She gestured as if to bring on the next implausible exhibit of Penelope Garcia's _Believe it or Not_. "Did I really hear you call him Skee Ball Wizard?"

"Yeah, can you believe he'd never played skee ball until I taught him? Talk about culturally deprived. I had almost bagged enough tickets to get this totally otaku-trade pink and purple stuffed dinosaur for my office, too, when the student squashed the teacher in the last match. Just my luck, huh? At least he's having fun, though. I don't think I've ever seen him smile so much."

"Wait, wait, wait," J.J. said again, a chuckle of astonishment barely concealed behind her sentence. "You and Hotch? You and Aaron Hotchner. SSA Aaron Hotchner. Played skee ball? Together? At the Santa Cruz Boardwalk? And he smiled?"

"Smiled and laughed and even giggled like a little kid once. That's about the size of it. Speaking of which, gotta run, my girl. I'm famished and dinner smells great. Wheels up at noon. See you on the tarmac. Is that all for now?"

J.J. somehow nodded and shook her head at the same time. "Yeah, but you have a whole lot of explaining to do when I see you tomorrow, girlfriend."

A California dark was blackest in the pitch of night where the huge ferris wheel and roller coaster combined, burning brightly like two halves of an electric constellation. She was majorly going to miss this place. She had hated the very idea of coming here but now she loathed even the thought of going back.

Where else in the world could she sit on the veranda of her suite and look up at an amusement park? Where else could she hear gulls trilling above the ruminating surf? Where she could feel the soft pull of the wind in her hair. And where else could she be seated beside one actually, genuinely smiling Aaron Hotchner wearing beach shorts and a tank top in the warm and breezy evening.

The basket between them read Spiaggia dei Diamanti, a bamboo latticework interwoven with silvery grape salomitia leaves. The leaves glistened softly, lit by the lights and the glint off the water and the very full moon.

"I wasn't sure whether we should go red or white with Italian seafood so I split the difference and ordered rosé. Matthias rosé," Hotch said.

"I know just enough about wine to know that's a good name," she said trying to sound like she was laughing, the sound of it echoing in the waves a bit before fading away. As the laugh faded, she felt an odd sense of longing that didn't yet have a name.

"What's wrong?" asked the strong and yet infinitely gentle man across the table from her who was busily removing a mobile chafing dish with two covered portions. He handed one of them to her. "You seem sad."

She considered the question and shrugged a little. Uncomfortable with holding his gaze so long, she turned her attention to the rolling, white edge of the ocean. "Sort of, it being our last night here, I guess. I love this place. I'm really going to miss it."

"It's beautiful," he said, nodding. He looked away almost shyly, staring in the direction she had started gazing. "It's all been beautiful. The whole trip. Even the case was enjoyable."

She tossed him a doubting smirk as she pealed away the top from their entrée. "Yeah, computer crime is a regular Cirque du Soleil."

"Seriously," Hotch said pointedly, then looked over at her, fully meeting her gaze. "This has been a badly needed emotional holiday for me, Penelope. I've been in a dark place for such a long time … and this has been a sunny and warm escape from all of that, by just being with you."

For a long moment, she was left beyond the reach of language. Something buried inside of her wouldn't let her know how deeply she had needed to hear those words.

"Thank you," she said, tearing up in surprise while the words barely escaped through the tightness in her throat. "I think that's one of the nicest things anyone's ever said to me." Trying to lessen the intensity, she reached across and poked him playfully with a finger. "Does that mean I get to flirt with you outrageously now at work?"

He laughed sharply in surprise, catching her hand to hold it a second and regain his composure. "No. It doesn't. Work is work."

"Oh, yeah, God forbid anyone know you're not all dour and serious all the time," she said, poking him in the side which made him laugh and push away her hand again. "Oh, wow, big-time info recon. Hotch is ticklish!" Garcia said, eyes wide at this new and delicious morsel of information as she abandoned her dinner to reach across with inquisitive fingers.

"No, he isn't," he said, again trying to seem serious while standing up quickly to avoid her hands.

"I call bullcrap on that," she said, growing a big grin.

"Call it whatever you like, Penelope," he said, laughing as he grabbed hold of her hand to counter her advance. When he grabbed it, he didn't let it go, as if he was inclined to keep it.

Garcia looked into the knowing light of his gaze and she sensed that he had caught a glint of something in hers, a look, and in that moment a kind of visual sharing of secrets. She always felt like he could see all the way through her. In that instant, she knew that he could.

Again she felt the hot and cold knowing surging through her. She shook her head in genuine wonder. And he was still holding her hand.

She cleared her dry throat before asking softly, "Sir, can I ask you a question?"

"If you're going to ask me what I think you are, you shouldn't call me sir."

Her eyes shut for a moment as she had to roll with the first sickly wave of embarrassment. She had a feeling it wouldn't be the evening's last. She pulled her hand out of his. "Oh, god, of course you know what I'm going to ask, you're a profiler. Never mind then, forget I mentioned anything."

"No, no. You can't back-out now."

"Ha, just watch me!"

"Ask me or I'll answer you regardless," he said, his lips lifting into a vaguely teasing smile. "And it'll be more embarrassing for you if we do things your way."

Blushing so that she felt like she had just walked into a noon-day forge in July, she lowered her gaze to escape his notice but then glanced over at him. He was still looking at her, still smiling.

She shut her eyes and turned her head. She swallowed hard then blinked her eyes open. He was watching her with a wan, open smile.

"Sir … Hotch, would you mind … all that much … if I kissed you?"

His smile expanded knowingly. "Well, you'll just have to kiss me to find out, won't you?"

She looked at him as if he was the most frightening thing in the free world and then some. She leaned across shyly, first gazing deeply into his gently humored eyes and then pressing her lips to his.

His lips responded without hesitation, surging up against hers to intensify the connection. One hand gently grasped at her head to lock the kiss in place.

Garcia backed away, blushing harder than the time before. Her lips pursed tightly in a low kind of terror. "Oh, my god, that was _nice_."

"That was more than simply nice, Ms. Garcia."

She swallowed hard, her frightened eyes aiming at him again. "It really was, wasn't it?"

"Yes. It was."

"How … " she whispered in breathless reply, "How did this happen?"

"I don't know. I'm only glad that it did. We've both wanted to kiss for at least two weeks. Maybe longer, if we're honest with ourselves."

She shook her head then nodded. "At least a month," she said, with nothing short of incredulousness in her voice. "I've wanted that kiss for at least a month."

"No, we haven't."

"We haven't?"

"No, not that kiss," he said. "I think the kiss we really want we should take inside, don't you?"

She nodded and whispered, "Oh my god yes."

Before Garcia knew what had happened, her hand was recaptured and she was pulled through the French doors which then enclosed them in a comforting darkness.

They were god knows how many miles above the country and it was sliding calmly beneath them. He was back in his suit. She was dressed for the office. He was working on his laptop but every so often he would look up from his work to find her watching him. He would smile. She'd blush and smile and look away.

Finally, she shut her eyes and tried to sleep.

Hiding behind her eyelids, she could honestly ponder _so what now_?

She didn't want to even consider how much the night before had meant. How it was all so much _with her_. What went on from here? Would they be as they were, deep friends as two parts of a team, or had they become something new and beautiful?

She couldn't sleep. She opened her eyes. He was watching her.

"What's wrong?" he asked simply, the gentleness of his voice almost breaking her heart.

She felt like she was going to cry. _Ask a question. Any question_.

"So, what did you do with all the skee ball points, Wiz?" she asked, laughing herself at the silliness of the question.

"I gave them away."

"Really?"

"Well, yes. They weren't going to be of much use to me back at Quantico. They're only worth something there at the Boardwalk. So, I got rid of them there."

"Oh," she said softly, unsure exactly why those words had driven an emotional sword through her but knowing clearly that they had. The best she could do to reply was mutter softly, "Yeah, I guess bringing them back with you wouldn't make sense."

What on earth had she been thinking? That somehow, this month could go on? That in some way, things wouldn't change from what they had become? But they had to change. As magical as these moments had been, just like the skee ball tickets, back in their own world they were of no real worth. They only belonged to that place and time. A token of memory. A vacation souvenir they would, once back home, perpetually pretend never happened.

She closed her eyes against the burden of real tears and pretended she was asleep long past their landing. She waited for him to deplane then let a half-hour slip away before she finally left the plane herself for the shuttle back to the Q.

She sighed as she lifted her handbag up once again onto the shelf where she usually kept it. The screens were alive, her email was blinking, her IMs were pulsing for her undivided attention.

The beautiful month in paradise was over, she realized, as she reached to turn her chair around.

Then she saw the big pink and purple dinosaur sitting in the middle of her chair. The dinosaur she had been about to spend her skee ball points on when Aaron Hotchner, Skee Ball Wizard, had royally bested her. There was a card sitting there with it that simply read _Penelope_.

She lifted it up with halting fingers, opening it to read.

_Everything makes sense to me now. Everything._

And the pink and purple guy that had held the card now stared up at her with big buggy eyes as if she had been utterly silly to ever doubt him.

She wondered if it was weird that she suddenly had tears in her eyes. She laughed but the sound came out like she was crying. And as if by magic, she had tears all over her hands, too.

"Like him?" a voice lit up the room from behind her.

She turned around to find him smiling at her clearly, truly. She nodded, fighting for a voice, "You spent all your skee ball points on my dinosaur?"

He nodded. "Did you think I wouldn't?"

She shrugged, at a loss for any semblance of a word. Finally, she just asked, "You really think this thing between us makes some kind of sense?"

"If you really think about it," he said just as softly, "This thing between us is the only _thing _that does make sense. Dinner tonight?"

"Sure."

"Good. I'll pick you up around eight," he said, smiled and walked away with his usual determined pace yet she could have sworn she heard him humming before his steps finally faded away.


End file.
